My Paperbacks for Summer
July 11, 2010
Thank you to those of you who shared some of your summer suggestions (posted last time). Today I am sharing my stack of paperback hope-to-reads-by-end-of-the-summer. As I see them all together I realize the covers don’t look particularly chipper considering this is the season for light and bright! Better send me your bubblegum coloured chick lit suggestions to perk things up around here …
Meanwhile, here’s my list and why each one made the cut:
Silas Marner by George Eliot – A classic. I’m hearing quite a bit about a return to reading the classics missed (or avoided?) through the years. This was a gift from a dear English friend and I’ve harboured great guilt in not yet having given it it’s due attention.
The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser – On the night of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and roamed the Museum’s galleries, stealing thirteen works of art. The stolen works include some of the most important in art history. I visited the museum around this time (not guilty!) and absolutely loved it. Am intrigued by this unsolved mystery.
Same Kind Of Different As Me: A Modern-day Slave, An International Art Dealer, And The Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together by Ron Hall and Denver Moore – A wealthy businessman is encouraged by his wife to volunteer with the Union Gospel Mission. He meets a homeless man there who becomes deeply intertwined in his life. “A story so incredible no novelist would dare dream it.”
The Piano Teacher by Janice Lee – A tale of love and betrayal beginning in war-torn Hong Kong of 1942 and carrying on to a decade later when “impossible choices emerge-between love and safety, courage and survival, the present, and above all, the past.”
At Least in the City Someone Would Hear me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life by Wade Rouse. Wade Rouse captured my heart at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference and I’ve been looking forward to the guaranteed combination of laughs and poignancy in this newly released paperback.
The Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella – The worlds of business and romance and coffee in end of the 19th Century London and beyond. I’m thinking an entertaining recipe!
The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick – A “man of means” from Wisconsin seeks a wife through newspaper ads in the late 1800s and selects one who is not all that she says she is.
The Secret Daughter by Shalpi Somaya Gowda – A Globe and Mail bestseller for many weeks now. The story of a child born in a small village in India and given up for adoption to a woman doctor in America. “The story moves between the two families, one struggling to eke out an existence in Mumbai, the other grappling with the challenge of raising a brownskinned child from another culture.”
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, And Madness At The Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson- I ended a recent visit to Chicago with a desire to read about some of the lively characters that populated its history. “Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, this spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men–the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World”s Fair, striving to secure America’s place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death.
What are you reading this summer?
